


Beside the Moonlit Shore

by Beleriandings



Series: Tales of Lake Mithrim [5]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fingon/Maedhros mentioned, Gen, but not really the main point of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 00:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fingon saved Maedhros, but Turgon failed to save Elenwë.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beside the Moonlit Shore

Turukáno sat on a rock on the pebbled, windswept shore, staring out over the lake. Irissë could just make out his dark silhouette against the water. It was night, and the light of the sickle moon glanced off the ripples whipped up by the cold night breeze, shifting and changing as little whisps of cloud scudded across the sky. On the opposite shore she could just make out a few flickering points of light, the watch fires that were a constant reminder of the other camp, and its inhabitants. She didn’t want to look. Instead she watched her brother, as she approached him. He stared up at the sky, a habit of his, trying to pick out the familiar patterns of stars amid the clouds.

He must have heard her before he saw her. As she picked her way along the shore towards him he called out quietly, without turning around.

“Can’t sleep either, Irissë?”

“No, I can’t.” She reached him, standing in front of him and giving him a long, appraising look. “Turukáno. What are you doing out here?”

He looked up at her, meeting her eye. “I told you. I couldn’t sleep.”

She pursed her lips. “You  _never_  can. You need to sleep, Turukáno. You can’t look out at the lake every night forever.”

He looked away from her and did not answer, but she carried on speaking, not dissuaded. “Turukáno. I just checked on Itarillë.”

“How is she? I put her to bed earlier, is she - ”

“Don’t worry, she is still sleeping peacefully. I really think she’ll be alright, in time. She is a strong child, and she has been very brave.” Irissë grimaced, hoping that she sounded more confident of that than she felt. “It’s you I’m more worried about, Turno.”

“Well, don’t be” he snapped. His voice was rough, but his eyes were empty. “I am fine.”

She raised one eyebrow sceptically. “Come on. You hardly touch your food. You don’t talk to anyone if you can help it. And I never see you sleep. Instead you sit here every night, in the freezing cold, staring out over the lake thinking who knows what horrible things, which just make it all  _worse_. And… and I’m so worried about you, Turno. You say you’re fine, but you’re not fine, you’re anything but fine, and you won’t even let me  _talk_  to you.”

He stared up at her, looking slightly surprised by this outburst. She held his gaze, a little surprised herself. Suddenly she felt awkward. “I… I brought you some warm gloves, anyway” she muttered. “I saw you wrapped Itarillë in your cloak as an extra blanket before you left, and while that was very noble of you” - she surveyed his threadbare tunic and thin trousers – “I know you must be cold.” She held out a pair of fur gloves towards him, and for a moment their eyes met, brother and sister locked in a contest of wills. Then he sighed and took the gloves wordlessly. He put them on. She unclasped the pale grey woollen cloak she wore, and, sitting down decisively beside him, she wrapped it around both of them.

“You’re not going to make me go inside?” His mouth twisted a little at the corner.

“Make you? I can’t  _make_  you. What I can do is stay here with you. And I plan to.”

He was silent, looking out over the lake again with expressionless eyes. “Where’s Findekáno?” he asked suddenly.

She winced a little. She had hoped the conversation would not go in this particular direction; she doubted that it would help the situation. “He’s asleep” she said carefully.

“You mean he left Maitimo for longer than five minutes?”

“Well, no… he fell asleep in the chair by his bedside.”

Turukáno was silent for a while, pressing his lips together and frowning a little. “I don’t understand, Irissë” he finally admitted. “I feel like I don’t know Findekáno anymore. Can he really have forgiven Maitimo? Was it that easy for him?” He paused, as if doubting himself. “Would  _you_ have forgiven him?”

She considered this, stalling for time as she thought about what to tell him. “If you’re asking what I would have done…” she decided on the truth. “I would have done the same. Exactly the same. But I don’t know if I would have completely forgiven him. I’m not even sure Finno  _has_  forgiven him. I suppose we shall find out when –  _if_  – Maitimo wakes up.” She faltered. She did not even want to think of how it would be for Findekáno if Maitimo did not wake up, if he were to die now. She hastily pushed the thought from her mind.

“But as to why he did it… Turno, you’re only asking me to explain how love works. I’m not a poet, or a philosopher, in fact it was always  _you_  that was the cleverest one in the family.”

Once, she knew, that would have made him smile. But that was before. Now his eyes were empty, horribly empty, his expression flat.

“You think it is love then? You think Findekáno loves him.” His voice was toneless.

She hesitated. “Yes. What else can it be…?” The question hung in the air between them.

Eventually Turukáno spoke again. His voice was halting now, broken and hollow. “But… what I want to know is… why? Why did Manwë decide to help two… kinslayers…” - he saw that she was about to speak - “…no, don’t look like that, I love Finno, but he is a kinslayer, just as much as  _they_  are.” He gestured across the lake. “Why did the Valar think they were more worthy of help? Why not… Elenwë? Arakáno?” His voice caught in his throat, hard-edged and bitter now. “What is it about Findekáno? What makes him so  _damned special_? Why was he permitted to have the one he loves back at his side, even given aid, when I was given  _nothing_ , not a single scrap of help or luck? I don’t understand, Irissë. I was always… I always respected the Valar. Loved them, even. And now it feels like they are mocking me. I… I feel useless, and I don’t understand, and I hate it, and I want so much to keep Itarillë safe, away from all this. But I’ve already failed her. I couldn’t save Elenwë. And I’m so tired of it, and I just don’t know what to do anymore…” he broke off, his voice cracking, panic welling up into it. He breathed in slowly, leaning forward and covering his face with his hands.

Irissë wrapped the cloak a little tighter around them both, a calming hand reflexively making small circles on his back, just below the nape of his neck. She could feel the tension in his spine. She felt a little disturbed, although she tried not to let it show on her face. She hadn’t heard him speak this many words at once since before Elenwë’s death, and when he said anything now it was in that flat, lifeless voice, devoid of emotion. And he only spoke when absolutely necessary, of determinedly practical things. The needs of survival. But now… she supposed it was good if he spoke his thoughts to someone, but she felt suddenly very young and small, and ill-equipped to answer him or offer any comfort.

She remembered when they had first seen the lights in the sky, back on the Ice. It was only their third night of the journey proper, back when the concept of days had still meant something, although the treelight was long gone. The deaths had not yet begun then, the horrible pantomime that would mark out the rest of the journey, dividing the days and weeks, the only way anyone could remember how to measure time. Brighter than the stars those lights had been, rivers and curtains of rippling, dancing colour in the sky. They had stared up, in childlike awe, naïve as those who have seen little of the world are. “Varda is dreaming!” someone had cried, and the shout was taken up, a beautiful image, a message of hope to keep in their hearts. Locked safely away to bear them through the dark. “The Valar are smiling on us!” The curse had seemed like a little thing, in that moment, a simple misunderstanding, under that vast sky strewn with stars and moving, twisting tendrils of coloured light, shimmering waterfalls like spilled paint on a dark canvas. How credulous they had been then, she thought bitterly. How much they had wanted to believe that there was a point to all of this, that the Valar cared enough to watch over them.

The lights, at least, remained. But as the deaths began, they began to feel more like a mockery. Horrors, things she longed to forget, grisly images that still plagued her nightmares, all of them playing out under that achingly beautiful, endless sky. She knew why her brother felt like it was someone’s idea of a brutal, twisted joke. She felt the same. The Valar were cruel, or at the very least uncaring.

Or at least, she  _had_  thought that. But now Findekáno had returned, telling his incredible story with its tentative happy ending, and with Maitimo in his arms, the living proof… she no longer knew what to think. She could not find it in her heart to hold it against Findekáno, not when he had found some small measure of happiness again, at least enough to keep him alive, to keep him fighting the darkness. But for herself, she felt cast adrift all over again. She didn’t know what to think. No one did.

Irissë sat up a little straighter, trying to steady her breathing. One thing at a time. It would get better. She would keep repeating that to herself, even if she knew it was a lie, or at best a false hope. Because she knew she must.

“Turno?” When he didn’t react, she gently unclasped his hands from his face, turning him to face her. His expression was set again, his face as hard and immovable as if he were carved from stone. But his eyes were bloodshot and shining, and she realised he had been weeping, without a sound, his face hidden by the dark fall of his hair. Silently she wrapped her arms around him, taking almost as much comfort as she gave. She breathed in the smell of his hair, feeling like a child again, remembering all the times her two older brothers had comforted her and Arakáno when they had been woken by nightmares. But that life was long gone now. Arakáno was dead, his blood soaking into their father’s clothes as he had cradled his youngest son’s body, and Turukáno was the one who needed to be comforted, and Findekáno had faced the nightmares, which, it turned out, were real after all. Everything was off, everything was wrong, and they could never go home. They had no home, not anymore.

But one day they would. She had to believe that. “Turno, I’ll stay with you.” She barely knew what she was saying. “I’ll… I’ll help you. I’ll look after you and Itarillë. Things will get better, I promise. You and I will make things better. Together. Itarillë will have a happy and safe place to grow up, because you and I will  _make_  it so. Do you understand, Turukáno?” She whispered the words into his hair. She was not even sure she understood herself, or that what she said made any sense at all. But she hoped he would at least take some comfort from the words.

He sat back and looked at her, as though thinking. Finally he gave a small, hesitant smile, barely more than a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth and eyes. But it was still the first smile she had seen on his face in longer than she cared to think about. The effect reminded her of the rising of the strange new sun, as if dawn were breaking across his face. “Thank you, Irissë.” It was all that needed to be said.

And then the moment was gone, his face closed again, as though the clouds had been swept back over the sun. But the important thing, she thought, was that her brother was still there, buried somewhere underneath. He could come back, if not the same, then at least not entirely a different person. And she would try to help him. She did not know what the future held, but at least, she thought, at least she had that. It was not much, but it was something.


End file.
